An active devotee of my writing, George Harding, has thrust me into the often nerve-wracking exercise of negotiating a vocabulary puzzle. To subtly restate a certain comedic author, it’s related to a bike. Indeed, he pointedly invokes Flann O’Brien to support his point of critique.
George notes, “I found myself rather taken aback by your usage of ‘push-bikes’ in one of your recent pieces (Diary, October 12th). That term became outdated ages ago. I recall reprimanding a journalist from RTÉ’s Nationwide for using it when discussing Kelly and Roche in the mid-eighties phase.
He states, “The era of ‘Mountain’ bikes began at the start of the eighties and the majority of these came with 18 gear options, thus eliminating any need to ‘push’ a bike – it was meant to be ridden.
He continues, “The phrase went out of within the public’s vocabulary roughly around the late sixties, at which point one could visualize a courier lad guiding his load-heavy bike uphill Patrick’s Hill. The last of such bulky bicycles, to my estimation, was sold by my father around 1964.”
His email wraps up by questioning, “The esteemed Flann, I conjecture, would never incorporate such a term, could we ever presume him naming the most humorous Irish authored book ‘The Third Guard’?”
Responding to the final inquiry, despite it veering off-topic somewhat, if the insinuation is that ‘guard’ is an archaic expression, replaced by today’s ‘policeman’, I must respectfully disagree.
As best as I can ascertain, The Third Policemen is set (loosely) in a pre-Independence Ireland, hence the usage of ‘policemen’ in place of the contemporary term ‘guards’ in Flann’s era, and ‘parliament’ as opposed to the ‘Dáil’.
Regarding the main point, it is accurate that I found the term “push-bike” rather antiquated when my attention was first brought to it, especially in the context of 2024. I then realised why I, along with many others, still use it: to differentiate a traditional, entirely manpower-driven bicycle from the rapidly increasing number of e-bikes, which require minimal or no manual effort. It seems unfair to categorise both as “cycling”.
On a personal note, I predominantly use the Dublin rental bikes nowadays, which bear a greater weight than some compact vehicles. Navigating them uphill always proves somewhat strenuous (a term we’ve been analysing recently). There have been instances when I had to manually push these bikes, such as when I am hauling a Christmas tree. One advantage is that with precise balancing, you can transport a seven-foot tree using a Dublin bike – but fitting oneself in the saddle concurrently usually isn’t possible.
However, it was only after receiving George’s email that I became aware that for certain bicycling enthusiasts, there is an inherent dislike for the term “push-bikes”. According to one cycling blogger, the term is “insulting, old-fashioned, and annoying”, wherein the first and third descriptions essentially mean the same thing and serve a purpose similar to that of bike stabilisers.
The phrase “push-bike” was first introduced over a hundred years ago, and even then was used derogatorily. The term might have first been used by an American author, Joseph Pennell, in 1903, who adopted a scornful attitude towards it. He was initially an avid bicyclist and wrote about it, but later became a fan of motorbikes, leading to his disdain for “push bikes”.
A decade later, in 1914, The Times of London reported an increase in the term’s usage as a sign of the impending obsolescence of the bicycle due to the advent of motorised transportation.
A couple of years ago, what was once straightforwardly known as a bicycle came to be rather disdainfully rebranded as a ‘push-bike’, in a similar vein to the evolution from carriage to ‘horse-drawn carriage’. This led the newspaper to draw a parallel between this distinctive shift in nomenclature and the tolling of a bell.
Contrary to the early annunciation of the demise of the ‘push-bike’, it remains stronger than ever, even 110 years later. The mere fact that the term ‘push-bike’ is still in fitting usage might have astounded the journalist from The Times, and even more so, the absence of any inherent insolence in the usage.
Now, to revisit the concern raised by George, I took a trip back into time, diving into old records to determine if the phase had ever rolled off Flann’s pen.
I thought I’d hit the jackpot with an excerpt from 1942, but it turned out to be a misplaced excitement; the extract was from Bertie Smyllie, a former editor of IT. Smyllie was voicing his lamentation over the maddening scarcity of rubber during the war.
In spite of the bleak future of tyres for private motorists, he expressed no reservations. “Although we have been forewarned that rubber tyres will no longer be available to private car owners, I bear no grudges,” he said nonchalantly. “No complaints shall come from me if I can scrounge up a couple of used tyres for my worn-out ‘push-bike’. I bid farewell to the luxury of private car ownership when Poland was invaded.”
He proceeded to forecast a future devoid of private cars, a complete reversal of the pre-war prediction by The London Times. Pausing briefly for a pun from Myles na gCopaleen – as he aptly put it, ‘Grip this one securely, Joe, it’s a slippery one!’ He then added with no small measure of dread that it would require incalculable gallons of petrol to quench the oleiferous regions before private motorists could once again take their cars for a spin.